okładka

V. 32 N. 2 (2018)

ISSN:
1427-7476

Section: Eseje

The Communist Party of the United States of America since 1919

John Radzilowsky

University of Alaska Southeast

Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość, V. 32 N. 2 (2018), pages: 15-26

Publication date: 2018-12-30

Abstract

The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) was the most influential communist party in the Western Hemisphere until the 1950s. Although it never had a mass membership, it gained the allegiance of many influential political and cultural figures. Its membership consisted of Anglo-Saxons as well as immigrants and children of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. The CPUSA played a controversial role in American political history in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s when attempts by anti-communists to discredit the party as an arm of the Soviet Union backfired. Scholarship on the CPUSA is deeply divided as a result of these political controversies. Traditional scholarship emphasized the CPUSA as an indigenous development with limited ties to the Soviet Union. This school lauded the CPUSA for its apparent support of civil rights, unions, and racial equality. A revisionist approach emphasized the party’s ties to Moscow and viewed it as dedicated to supporting a foreign totalitarian regime. Since 1991, the release of many secret CPUSA documents has strongly supported the revisionist school, demonstrating that the party followed closely the political and operational directives of Soviet security services and was deeply involved in assisting Soviet espionage and acted as an agent of influence for the USSR.

Brown M.E., Randy M., Rosengarten F., Snedeker G., eds., New Studies in the Politics and Culture of U. S. Communism (New York, 1993).

Chambers W., Witness (New York, 1952).

Draper T., American Communism and Soviet Russia: The Formative Period (New York, 1960).

Draper T., The Roots of American Communism (New York, 1957).

Haynes J.E., Klehr H., In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage (San Francisco, 2003).

Haynes J.E., Klehr H., Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, 1999).

Haynes J.E., Klehr H., Vassiliev A., Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven, 2010).

Kelly R.D.G., Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, 1990).

Klehr H., Haynes J.E., Anderson K.M., The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven, 1998).

Klehr H., Haynes J.E., Firsov F.I., The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven, 1995).

Ottanelli F., The Communist Party of the United States from the Depression to World War II (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).

Powers R.G., Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Communism (New Haven, 1998).

Romerstein H., Breindel E., The Venona Secrets: The Definitive Expose of Soviet Espionage in America (Chicago, 2000).

Taylor G.S., The History of the North Carolina Communist Party (Columbia, 2009).

Zake I., ed., Anti-Communist Minorities in the U.S.: Political Activism of Ethnic Refugees (New York, 2009).

okładka

V. 32 N. 2 (2018)

ISSN:
1427-7476

Data publikacji:
2018-12-08

Dział: Eseje